The Grand Plan - AFL SuperCoach 2026

Merry Christmas 🎄 

While most people are preparing for Christmas Day, I’m taking advantage of sport lull that exists leading into Boxing Day and the biggest sporting day of the year. On Friday we have an extravaganza - 3 NFL matches (which are underwhelming by chance this year), 5 NBA blockbusters, The Boxing Day Test at the mighty MCG (dead rubber pffft 5-0 incoming) and the 2 games of the Big Bash. There’s even a yacht race if that floats your boat, pardon the pun.

In the meantime though I’m starting my SC planning, like I always do every year. By reminding myself of the grand plan. What’s the end game?

It’s easy to get fixated on new rules, individual players and their new prices, bye structures or proposed role changes. There is news of every man and his dog flying in preseason, and there is absolutely time to absorb all of that and we absolutely will here at Insight in the preseason, but first it has to all start with a plan, and this is what I’m spending a little bit of time talking through today.

Ultimately, no matter what your focus (overall rank, league wins, or beating your mates), we are all trying to score as high as possible each week, while building a best 22, 23 or even 24 (if we can manage it) by the end of the bye rounds.

Whether you are a casual SC player, a seasoned pro, or somewhere in between, this article should challenge your thinking and help you set up your starting squad with a good plan in mind. I mean sure you can just sort the SC app by owned player % and go with the crowd, and I absolutely do suggest you keep an eye on that especially when selecting your rookies, but as the year progresses the more you have a week, fortnight or month ahead in mind the better placed you will be to get to that coveted full premo 23.

For this first grand plan article I am going to steer away from specific players. Like last year I will do a follow up in the preseason that focuses on how you might take a starting squad through to a full premo squad and how you generate cash and make your trades. 

But for today, I’m just setting the scene to help your initial team picker tinkering and how to categorise your players.

Let’s start with a blank page, a beautiful $10m starting bank and the ability to pick whoever the hell you want.

Group think is very real in SC and we will do some articles later on about Must Haves, PODs and Anti-Pods but in my initial planning I like to carve my positions up into categories. I find it helps me evaluate each players purpose in my team and helps me to simply target players I like without thinking about whether these players are likely to be able to perform a certain role in my team to help me ultimately get to my full premo line up.

So let’s work through the specific categories that I use to help me stay true to the strategy.

NOTE - there isn’t one “right” way to play SC, if you like certain blokes, pick them, if you hate certain blokes, avoid them. All I’m suggesting is you have a plan of some sort. Yours can be different to mine. I’d love to hear in the WhatsApp group if you do things slightly differently to set yourself up.

• Player Categories

I’m using the these categories to remind me of the various roles in the team.

Category 

Definition 

Role 

Keeper 

priced at $500,000 plus and expected to be in your  final team 

To score max points and be a top of line player at the end of season.

Getting these right in your starting squad is critical. Chasing premos early distracts from cash gen and buying value.

Mid Pricer / Stepping Stone

Priced between $300,000 and $500,000

To outscore their priced at average, generate cash and enable a stepping stone to a final team player.

Best case scenario, a couple of these end up keepers, but I never plan for that, which enables me to plan well later.

Discounted Value players 

Priced between $203,500 and $300,000

To generate cash. Ideally, $100k-$150k each 

This category is the riskiest in SC. Get these right and they are massive, get them wrong and they stall cash gen and waste trades.

Rookie

Priced between $99,100 and $203,500 (price of pick 1 in National Draft Will Duursma)

To generate cash. Ideally $150k+ each.

Thank goodness the sub rule is gone. This category dictates your structure.

2. Starting squad 

So let’s use the above categories to help set up some more specifics of how to pick a starting team.

I haven’t analysed the rookie viability by position in any depth yet, and those who’ve been following me for a while will know I always say Rookies dictate structure, so today is less about the specific structure and more about the bigger picture. 

Later in the preseason it will become clearer how many rookies are viable in defence, midfield, and forward and that will ultimately dictate how many keepers and mid pricer / stepping stones we select in each line.

I then choose which strategy I want to deploy. The two main strategies SC veterans deploy are:

• Guns and rookies 

• Midpriced madness 

Personally, I used to favour exclusively guns and rookies. But I must admit recently I’ve been more drawn to a hybrid of the two. I’ll demonstrate the difference so you can select for yourself.

Guns and rookies

This strategy in its purest form avoids mid pricer / stepping stones and discounted value players and picks the bulk of your squad from the keeper and rookie category.

It doesn’t mean you can’t select any mid pricers or heavily discounted guys, but it means you are very selective about those categories.

The attraction in this strategy is you pick more of the highest priced keepers to start who are proven scorers and the rookies do the cash generating.

The risk is if your rookies don’t make enough cash it’s hard to get up to the fallen premos, because they are obviously starting from the lowest $ value. So even if they make $150k there is still a fair gap to the fallen premos you want to buy between round 6-15.

Number of keepers = 10 (in my example below, I’ve chosen 10 of the most expensive keepers. You can choose more at around $500k-$550k and fit more keepers in if you wish)

Number of Mid pricers = 3

Number of heavily discounted = 1

Number of Rookies = 17

Example team : 

Midpriced Madness 

This strategy prioritises value. You still pick some keepers to use as VC and C each week, but the bulk of your scoring comes from your value mid priced players.

Your rookies and mid pricers generate the cash to get to your final team. 

The advantages of this strategy is the leap to fallen premos isn’t as great.

The risk is you are selecting players that historically have something against them to be priced where they are, either injury risk or regression from higher years etc.

Number of keepers = 4 (these are usually even value based keepers in a mid priced madness strategy)

Number of Mid pricers = 14

Number of heavily discounted = 1

Number of Rookies = 12

Example team : 

As I said earlier, these days I tend to use a bit of a hybrid between the two strategies. My starting team will be something like this 

Number of keepers = 7 

Because I choose a hybrid approach I like to make sure these 7 keepers are genuine top of line keepers. I am happy to take some risk in my mid pricers, but I don’t really want to take risk in these keepers or I will be chasing all year.

Number of Mid pricers = 9

This year I particularly like the mid priced defenders so I am thinking I’ll load up on these. It’s always a risk, but if I can get even 3 of these to be keepers I’ll be in decent shape.

Number of heavily discounted = 1

This is my least favourite category. I will probably only pick 1 or 2 from this range. I tend to prefer to let the rookies do the heavy lifting for bulk cash and stepping stones the east trade ups, so this range for me I will only select if I really can’t pass up somebody. 

Examples in this range I am considering - Coleman, Ballard, Blakiston

Number of Rookies = 14

You’ll notice this early in the year, I’ve tried to select as many expensive rookies as possible. It’s far easier to go down to someone that we think will get games than it is to go up.

My current team

5. Conclusion

Hopefully this helps your planning, especially as we hear more news and tinker with the individuals in our teams constantly between now and round 0. I encourage experimenting, this is the most fun time of the SC year, where we can muck around with our teams at no cost before the real stuff starts and we get sucked in by someone again that we promised we wouldn’t or we rage trade out a Pepper Pig, only for him to go on and make $250k cash.

Merry Christmas to you and your family. 

May you have a wonderful Day tomorrow, enjoy the sport extravaganza on Boxing Day and a fantastic break if you are having one over the New year period.

It’s also ok to seek help if you are struggling. Not everyone has their family with them or is able to spend time with the people they love for one reason or another, so if you are struggling and need help, please don’t hesitate to reach out in chat. It’s not weak to speak and it’s ok to not be ok.

There will be an update each week within our Patreon for all that are AFL subscribers. Horse and I will also be running members only QnA's throughout the year to help you guys win your leagues!

• Hurls